FLINT, MI -- City Councilman Eric Mays has been sentenced to 72 days in jail and order to pay restitution of $10,800 for impaired driving, and deputies have taken him directly to the Genesee County Jail.

He will be transferred to the Lapeer County Jail today to serve his sentence, said Genesee County Sheriff Robert Pickell.

Mays was handcuffed by county Sheriff's Office deputies after Flint District Judge Nathaniel Perry sentenced him today, Aug. 15, saying the councilman put his own constituents in danger by driving the wrong way while legally drunk.

"You want to make everybody the villain for what you have done," Perry told Mays. "That is a problem in the court's mind."

Mays, who is appealing his conviction in Genesee Circuit Court, asked Perry to stay his jail sentence as he was led from the courtroom by deputies, but Perry denied his request.

"There's no excuse for this -- none whatsoever," Perry said of impaired driving incident.

Mays was initially charged with five misdemeanors in relation to a Nov. 30 arrest when police said they witnessed him outside a disabled car, which was facing the wrong way on Interstate 475 at about 3 a.m.

Mays never admitted that he was driving the vehicle he had borrowed, and last month, a jury found him not guilty of three of the five misdemeanors, replaced one of the five charges with a lesser charge of impaired driving, and deadlocked on the final charge.

The jury found Mays not guilty of operating a vehicle while intoxicated, possession of marijuana and refusing to be fingerprinted in connection with the incident.